Not Quality, Flying on the flats

Last night we arrived at our hotel just outside of Salt Lake City, a Quality Inn.  It’s pool was under construction but we didn’t really care since we had no intentions of using it.  We wound up having a great dinner at a chain called Rubio’s Fresh Mexican Grill.  It was sort of awesome because they had a TON of seafood based Mexican selections.  Cindy had a sea bass dish she loved and I had some mahi mahi tacos that were equally good.  Cindy and I both wished this chain was in our area, we would frequent it routinely.

After dinner I was on a mission to find a USB mini cable, the type used for a GoPro.  I forgot to bring my wire.  There was a Best Buy so I figured I could easily pick one up there.  Well after 15 minutes of searching and finding nothing but micro connectors I asked an employee, I had to simply be missing them.  Nope, he checked inventory and they did not have a single USB mini style cable, that is unbelievable.  We popped into the Barnes and Noble next door on the off chance the Nook used a USB mini style cable and again came up empty.  I was pissed at myself when we were almost back to our hotel and realized I could have also scored a SD to micro SD adapter to accomplish the same goal, dumb ass.

The hotel seemed nice enough but there were a number of small details that wound up giving us an overall negative impression of the place.  The first came to light last night when we were showering.  Cindy spotted some mold/mildew on the ceiling and on some of the grout in the shower.  Yea that’s gross but I did not feel motivated enough about it to want to repack and unpack in another room. Then this morning I was annoyed that we ran out of tissues, something that should always be checked by the cleaning crew.

The biggest annoyances came at the breakfast bar that they seemed to deem as very valuable since a coupon was required to get access to it.  They also had a large sign posted on the door that said you absolutely were not allowed to take any food out of breakfast room. Well the breakfast was the worst we had on the trip.  The scrambled eggs were swimming in water, the juice dispenser spit out more water than juice, there were no knives, the dispenser for the cereal was broken, and the yogurt was squirted out of dispenser normally reserved for ketchup or mustard. The experience made Quality Inn drop down quite a few notches in our potential future hotel accomodation list.

We again set an alarm today so we got out on the road early en route to the Bonneville Salt Flats.  We were glad to once again have a Dunkin Donuts nearby, a luxury we were missing the last few days.  I could tell Cindy was not all that excited about this stop on the trip but I had wanted to see it for quite awhile after having to skip it on prior road trips.

The drive out there was roughly 90 minutes and allowed us to briefly see the Great Salt Lake, something I never caught a glimpse of before.  As we appoached the salt flat area it almost looked like winter with foggy skies and nothing but flat whiteness on either side of the road. I did not really know what to expect when we got there.  I assumed there would be some sort of visitor center since it was a state park.  Instead it was a road with a small sign by the left of it where the road ended and the drivable part of the flats began.  No rules, no regulations, just a huge white expanse ahead of us.

I had told Cindy repeatedly that I planned to do some high speed driving with the Prius on the flats.  She told me repeatedly she didn’t think it was a good idea.  I did not agree.  The surface of the flats is quite rough with the hardened sand.  The texture reminded me of a thin layer of snow after it has melted, refroze and been driven on a few times.  It was very crunchy under your feet.  I got down on my knees and put my toungue on the ground to verify it’s salt content.  I confirmed we were indeed standing on millions of tons of salt.

So I did a preliminary drive on the salt at speed, getting up to around 50 mph.  The car felt a little odd driving across the resistance the crusty salt offers.  It also creates a LOT of road noise.  I then told Cindy to do a high speed drive by while I shot video.  Her idea of high speed and mine were totally different, she went by at maybe 50 mph a couple times.  I said it was my turn.

I had joked with Cindy I wanted to push the Prius to 100 mph, an idea she absolutely did not agree with.  I made several passes by her as she ran the camera.  The fastest I went was 75 mph, it just felt like going a lot faster could have been hazardous.  After our high speed runs the tires and wheel wells were absolutely packed with wet salt, a side effect I did not expect.  I knew we would have to get the salt out of there asap as nothing wrecks paint/metal faster than salt.

Cindy did another short tabata workout on the flats which again offered up a very unique back drop for a video.  I also made a triumphant return to the sky with my Phantom, after reassembling the camera frame.  I utilized the one battery pack I knew was good.  Despite it’s very rough life the last few days, the copter still flew well as I zoomed back and forth over the salt flats with the GoPro recording.  Cindy broadcast the flight on Periscope at the same time and had a surprisingly large audience.

I also had a brief exercise video shot as I dropped and knocked out 50 push up reps for the hell of it.  In total we may have only spent an hour at the flats but I thought it was great fun.  During one of my high speed runs I noticed there was an abandoned orange cone in the middle of nowhere.  I told Cindy that would be the ultimate unique Salt Flats souvenir that could serve double duty as part of my Green Machine Timing equipment stockpile.  At first she was very opposed to the idea, saying we didn’t have room and she didn’t want a big salty cone amongst our luggage.  Eventually I convinced her of the awesomeness of this idea.  She put the cone inside of a couple empty bags.  It will now be our companion for the rest of the trip.

So the first priority was to find a place to wash off all that salt.  I could not believe that the gas station at the exit for the salt flats did not have a car wash, they would make a freaking fortune with one.  The clerk said the closest wash was a few miles away in town.  Even though we didn’t have the car wash at the gas station Cindy utilized one of the windshield washer tools to try to scrape as much of the salt off as she could.  She worked hard but there was still a TON of salt in the wheel wells.

So we found the car wash in town.  There were two people in front of us.  I asked Cindy to run in and pay for the wash so I wouldn’t lose my spot in line.  She returned with a ticket for the express wash service.  The two cars in front of me took forever, I bet each cycle was at least 7 or 8 minutes long.  I was happy to see the wash had a real high strength rocker panel blaster as part of the service.  So after about 20 minutes of waiting we pulled into the wash and I immediately realized the express wash doesn’t include extras like the high pressure rocker panel blaster the car so badly needed.  I immediately got really frustrated since I had been waiting so long for a wash that I knew was not going to be all that effective.  I gave Cindy a hard time about getting the express wash, a harder time than I should have in retrospect.  The sign for the different wash levels indicated the express wash included an under carriage wash but that was just a low pressure deal.  I knew we were going to have to make another stop at some point to try to fully address the pounds of salt sticking to the car.

So after we stopped for lunch there was another gas station with a car wash. While we gassed up Cindy again did another extensive salt removal with the windshield cleaner wand.  Some other people pumping gas asked us if it was snow.  When we pulled out there were four substantial piles of salt.  I paid for my second car wash of the day, paying full boat for the best wash they had.  It did a nice job but there was still salt in areas of the wheel well that were up above the tires.  Thankfully we then spotted a water hose near the vacuum station.  I was able to use it to dissolve the rest of the salt that was stuck.  The flats were great but getting all that salt off was a major pain in the ass.

We are now less than 200 miles from Vegas, closing in on two days of fun that should not involve any time in a vehicle, a luxury we both could use by this point.